The new top bar has been deployed on Meta Stack Exchange. I have to admit, I'm not a fan.

To give more specific feedback, I really don't like how the Stack Exchange logo to the very left of the top bar has been made useless. On the old top bar, I could click the logo and get a dropdown of my most visited sites. On the new top bar, I click on the logo and get taken to the Stack Exchange homepage at stackexchange.com, which I never use. (Hot network questions are a complete waste of time, and the Stack Exchange homepage doesn't have anything else that would mean I would want to visit it regularly).

I don't mind the Stack Exchange logo being in the top bar, but if it's going to be there, why not make it do something useful? Right now, something that does something useless is being placed in a position that makes it extremely likely that it will be clicked. The dropdown that shows my most visited sites is on the right, which makes it hard to see and makes it less likely that I'm going to use it. I would prefer if that was moved to the left.

Apparently a dev made a change minutes after this was posted and the logo now does nothing. I'm also not a big fan of the logo doing nothing. It's a waste of space, it's confusing because everything else in the top bar is clickable, etc.

Strange. I'm clicking it and it's not doing anything, not even going to stackexchange.com. Is anyone else having this happen?
– LaurelSep 18 '17 at 18:03

@Laurel huh. That's happening to me too. I guess they changed it in the last few minutes. But I'm also not a fan of having the logo do nothing: that's a waste of space, it's confusing because everything else in the top bar is clickable, etc.
– user160606Sep 18 '17 at 18:04

4

@Laurel one of the developers rolled out a fix a few minutes ago. Before that, I believe the logo linked to Meta Stack Exchange.
– GlorfindelSep 18 '17 at 18:07

Well, they at least used a smaller version of the new top-bar compared to the one on Stack Overflow.
– TomSep 18 '17 at 18:43

The list of most-visited sites is now visible when you click the small SE logo on the far right of the top bar. I used to see this dropdown when I clicked on the Stack Exchange words in the top bar, as Hamlet mentioned.
– fsbSep 18 '17 at 19:39

@Glorfindel It linked to Meta because we're on Meta. The implementation was to have the SE logo link to the home page of the site you're on, which IMO doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense either.
– Adam Lear♦Sep 20 '17 at 5:15

2 Answers
2

This gives you the option to click through to the SE home page if that's what you were looking for, but -- like the other drop-down elements in the top bar -- does not navigate away to a completely different site on click. So the behavior is now consistent and there's no dead "hey, that looks like it should be clickable" element up there on the left.

(Yes, I know that clicking on your name navigates away too, to your user page, but it's still on the same site. Thanks to Adam Lear for pointing out why that's different.)

The key point isn't so much that nothing navigates you away, but rather that nothing navigates you away to a completely different site. The profile link is at least still a link to the same site you're on in the first place. (Stack Overflow does have other nav links in the topbar, but AFAIK we haven't quite worked out how or if to make a similar arrangement work on a much more diverse set of site designs on the rest of the network.)
– Adam Lear♦Dec 19 '17 at 6:35

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@AdamLear now it's weird. The community site dropdown's icon is a link to https://stackexchange.com (useful if you middle click it or right click and open link), the review icon is a link to /review, the rep bar a link to my profile, but the SE logo, inbox and achievements icons are not links to anything (they go to #). Inconsistent that.
– muruDec 19 '17 at 7:02

@AdamLear good point about the user-profile link, thanks. (Edited.)
– Monica Cellio♦Dec 19 '17 at 13:19

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@muru going through each link's targets / making sure middle-clicking does the correct thing is on my list for this week, thanks!
– Kasra RahjerdiDec 19 '17 at 15:03

@KasraRahjerdi sure... but if you change functionality, please keep the review icon a link! The new dropdown takes time to load the stats, so I tend to just middle click and open the review page in a new tab instead.
– muruDec 19 '17 at 15:07

Simply put, the Stack Exchange logo is a branding element that connects all of the network Q&A sites. When a user clicks a search result and goes to the page they can easily see that the site is a part of Stack Exchange. We've gone back and forth about whether it should be a link to stackexchange.com or not. That behavior may change, but the logo serves an important branding purpose and needs to be there.

I understand branding being important. But why can't the branding also do something? When you click on Facebook's logo, something useful happens--you go to the homepage. Here, either the logo takes you to a useless website (stackexchange.com) or it does nothing, which is especially confusing because everything else on the top bar is clickable.
– user160606Sep 20 '17 at 2:22

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@Hamlet Just because you don't find network stats or the HNQ interesting doesn't mean that other people don't. Personally I get tired of having to go through the HNQ sidebar just to find stackexchange.com
– Catija♦Sep 20 '17 at 2:36

@Catija you're talking to the person who has done everything (custom css, deleting accounts on other sites so I don't have the possibility to upvote stuff from the HNQ, etc.) to avoid the HNQ.
– user160606Sep 20 '17 at 2:39

@Catija and I've just hidden the logo with CSS, which for some reason is making me very happy.
– user160606Sep 20 '17 at 2:42

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I dont know why the logo dont pop the ´your community' menu, as the logo show the holder, stackexchange, and the menu represent the grouping under, that would fit for an logical usage
– yagmoth555Sep 20 '17 at 2:52

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IMO, having the site switcher there makes the most sense. Especially since it's already there in the current/old bar. I keep clicking on the logo expecting the switcher to be there until I figure out I'm on a site with the new bar.
– KevinSep 21 '17 at 1:00